| Last week, President Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had a curious response to the everyday hardships caused by record-high oil prices this summer. They proposed offshore oil drilling that conceivably could lead to slightly lower oil prices. In 2030. For all this talk about our energy supply, there’s a much more efficient, timely and broadly beneficial way to lower Americans’ energy costs today: Focus on demand. The hard reality is that America cannot increase our domestic oil supply sufficiently to reduce oil prices. America has just 2 percent of the proven oil reserves — and we consume almost a quarter of the world’s supply. Realistically, that means that we cannot drill our way to cheap energy — not now, and not even decades from now when the pipelines, rigs, permits, equipment and logistics necessary are finally in place and the offshore oil is for sale. In fact, President Bush’s own Energy Department says even if we opened up the entire Outer Continental Shelf — the East and West Coasts and the entire Eastern Gulf of Mexico — to drilling, there will be no “significant impact” on prices or production before 2030. Simply put, Republican policies will not reduce energy costs for American families anytime soon, if ever. The only solution to today’s high energy costs — at the pump and in our homes — is to focus on reducing demand. Even if prices remain high, energy efficiency measures will guarantee that Americans end up with more money in their pockets. Consider the case of home heating oil: The average family in the Northeast uses between 850 and 1,200 gallons of heating oil in a typical winter. A cold winter in parts of the United States brought home heating oil to a record-high average $3.26 a gallon. Next winter, that’s expected to climb to $4.46 per gallon — costing families up to $1,400 more than a year ago. The fastest way to reduce those bills is to help consumers upgrade or replace existing boilers and reduce their consumption of heating oil and other home heating fuels. We should implement an aggressive state-federal partnership program to do exactly that. We know these programs work and translate into real savings. In Massachusetts, the current natural gas energy efficiency programs administered by the utilities deliver significant benefits. One utility, Keyspan, tracked its results between 2005 and 2006 and found that its investment of $12.6 million per year produces total savings to consumers exceeding $73.4 million. But when it comes to saving money by increasing efficiency, home heating oil is just the tip of the iceberg. Businesses could see even larger savings by converting their buildings to use less energy and water. To save enough money to justify building a new plant in Texas instead of India or China, Texas Instruments hired top environmentalists and architects and built their factory green. Today they are saving $3 million per year on water and energy, bringing a $14.5 billion boost to Texas’ economy, and creating over 88,000 permanent jobs. We should be supporting these efforts by implementing programs included in last year’s energy bill. We need to provide incentives for states to improve building energy codes and fully fund the Commercial Building Initiative, a remarkable cooperative program aimed at achieving zero-net energy in all commercial buildings by the year 2030. America’s buildings consume 40 percent of our energy. We can dramatically reduce these numbers through aggressive energy efficiency programs. All of these changes can quickly bring savings to the American people by increasing energy efficiency to lower demand for energy. Over the long haul, we need to couple these efforts with a bold — and massive — new effort to transform our energy system and develop clean domestic energy sources like wind, solar and geothermal, and the next generation of biofuels. Those investments — and not new drilling off America’s coasts —are the best way to increase our domestic energy supply and assist consumers. The provisions in last year’s energy bill alone would save the equivalent of 17 billion barrels of oil — 95 percent of the oil available in the Outer Continental Shelf. The energy bill’s savings would go directly to Americans’ pockets — not to oil companies’ record profits. And we all know that the cleanest form of energy is the one never used in the first place. Instead of debating politically convenient proposals to drill more oil that offer no prospects of relief from record gas prices, we should seize the solution right in front of us and start investing in energy efficiency that will save Americans money right now.
Kerry is a member of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. | 
